What are Parish Registers?
In England and Wales, in 1538, each church was obliged to start keeping a register book containing details of all the baptisms, marriages and burials of people in that parish. The baptism registers would contain details of the date and the name of the child, and usually the names of the parents as well. This will enable you to then find details of any brothers and sisters that were born to the same couple, and then to start looking for their marriages and go back in time through baptisms, marriages, baptisms, marriages, hopefully for several generations. In the case of the burial registers, unfortunately it is only after about 1852 when people were buried in the churchyard that the burial registers would record details about them. Otherwise, you’d have to look in the local cemetery registers.
